Body surfing is a way to enjoy the thrill of riding a wave. Body surfers, generally, simply extend their bodies horizontally, projecting their arms forward and in line with their body while allowing a breaking wave to drive them shoreward with the surf. To the body surfer, it is important to be able to ride waves of varied sizes, to enjoy a stable ride and to be able to control direction and position on a wave face. Since a body surfer rarely uses any equipment other than swim fins, it is quite difficult for a body surfer to adequately control the stability of his ride and control his direction and position on a wave face.
For a body surfing suit to work in real life, bending is key (to allow for swimming), and buoyancy in the correct location(s) is also key. It is preferable to have a buoyancy gradient that is greatest (e.g., most buoyant) at the surfer's head and tapers down toward the feet to ensure that the surfer does not plow and tumble face first.
A few body surfing suits can be found in the prior art. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,106,331 to Lizarazu discloses a body surfing apparatus having a garment with a rigid outer shell attached to the torso portion of the garment and an inner buoyant unit underneath the torso portion of the garment. The rigid outer shell and inner buoyant unit make up a laminated multi-layered abdominal-chest plate. The shape of the abdominal-chest plate is contoured to cover the abdomen and extend upward into the central portion of the chest. This has two major problems: (1) the chest plate does not allow adequate forward bending because the rigidity of the laminated structure is not anatomically designed to allow full bending where the body actually bends (namely, the ribcage needs to be separate from the abdomen or it severely limits bending which one needs to swim properly) and (2) the suit puts the buoyant material in the wrong place, e.g., front center of the body, which results in plowing.
Additionally, the Lizarazu body surfing suit includes a number of fins located on the rigid outer shell and on the arms and legs of the suit. The arm fins are positioned on the upper arm region, are shaped incorrectly to be functional, and the lack of smooth edge detail causes a lot of drag. The arm fins do not likely provide buoyancy, but are rather present for stability. The legs fins suffer from similar problems as the arm fins and are present only for stability.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,013,271 to Bartlett discloses a body surfing suit having buoyant material placed on the chest and in various channels located on the legs of the suit. The Bartlett body surfing suit suffers from the following problems: (1) The buoyant material is incorrectly placed anteriorly and the main component includes coverage of the chest and abdomen in one piece; this makes the suit too rigid to allow adequate bending/tucking forward which is almost a requirement when maneuvering in the water to consistently catch waves. (2) In the upper chest and back region, the buoyant material is positioned both on the front and back of the suit in pad-like structures, but is not contoured anatomically and offers little benefit beyond adding some buoyancy. The back pads are simply buoyant areas without defined, streamlined 3-D contours. (3) The upper pointed regions of the chest piece extend out near the shoulder. These points impede anterior movement of the arm during the swimming stroke. (4) The suit does not have fins to aid in stability.
The present invention seeks to overcome these limitations by providing the body surfer a means to stabilize his ride and control his direction/position on a wave.